256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the reclamation of worthless land has been successfully tried. 

 Large areas of swamp and in some instances shallow lakes have 

 been connected with the tidal waters of the neighboring rivers by 

 channels cut through intervening ridges of upland, thus effecting 

 the double purpose of draining and of admitting the mud-laden 

 tides. In this way, in five or ten years, many acres of worthless 

 swamp have been converted into valuable dike-land. 



The use of marsh mud as a fertilizer is very general among 

 farmers to whom it is accessible. It is taken in the autumn or 

 winter from the bank of some tidal creek or river, where the daily 

 depositions can soon replace it, and spread directly on the upland. 

 Its effects are twofold : it enriches with valuable supplies of plant 

 food the soil to which it is applied, and it greatly improves the 

 texture of all light and open soils, making them more compact 

 and firm, and so more retentive of moisture and of those ingredi- 

 ents which are otherwise easily washed away. This permanent 

 effect upon the physical character of the soil which the marsh 

 mud produces renders undesirable its application to clayey soils 

 already compact and firm and moist enough ; for it makes them 

 more difficult to work, and more impervious to atmospheric influ- 

 ences. To well-drained hay fields, however, which need but little 

 cultivation, the mud may be advantageously applied, even though 

 the soil be naturally stiff and heavy. 



The French settlers were the first Acadian dike-builders. 

 They brought the art from the Netherlands; and to this day 

 no other class of provincial workmen is as skillful in the often 

 difficult work of dike construction as the Acadian French. It 

 was no doubt the existence of these vast areas of marsh land, whose 

 potential value was even then clearly seen, that induced the first 

 New World immigrants to settle about the Bay of Fundy shores ; 

 and it was these same broad, fertile marshes left unoccupied by the 

 expulsion of the Acadian French that attracted the New England 

 settlers, whose descendants now derive from them an income 

 aggregating not less than a million dollars annually. 



As described by B. F. S. Baden-Powell, in his In Savage Isles and Settled 

 Lands, the aboriginals of Australia are an extraordinary people — to look at, 

 " quite unlike any other human beings I ever saw. A thick, tangled mass of 

 black hair covers their heads ; their features are of the coarsest ; very large, broad, 

 and flattened noses; small, sharp, bead-like eyes and heavy eyebrows. They 

 generally have a coarse, tangled bit of beard ; skin very dark, and limbs extraordi- 

 narily attenuated like mere bones. But they always carry themselves very erect. 

 . . . They wander about stark naked over the less settled districts, and live en- 

 tirely on what they can pick up. ... If not the lowest type of humanity, they 

 would be hard to beat. They show but few signs of human instinct, and in their 

 ways seem to be more like beasts." 



